Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 410, December 1849

The steward now brought hot water, half a lemon, lump-sugar, tumbler half full of capital brandy. – "Here, steward, you may take the lemon away with you. Don't want it."

"Quite right," grunted Capsicum, who thought himself a connoisseur in all things eatable and drinkable. "Quite right; no rum, no lemon." Spite of his pitiful plight, he now, con amore, set himself to watch my operations critically; as if, from the brewing, he would form an estimate of my judgment, capabilities, taste, character, and general attainments.

With the silver tongs I extracted a lump of crystal sugar, the largest in the basin. The present "without" system was not then in vogue, nor have I adopted it yet. But now there was a hitch – how to melt the sugar. In the tumbler it must not go – there was the brandy: that had been an infringement of all the laws of potatory combination. I felt that I was under observation, and that my character was at stake. I placed the sugar in the spoon. "Quite right," said Capsicum.

Yet neither, according to the modern practice, did I wash the sugar, half melted, from the spoon into the tumbler, with a stream of hot water. That, I submit, is an approximation to the error of immersing the sugar in the unmixed brandy. No, no. Holding the spoon over the tumbler, I carefully dropped upon the sugar three drops of the boiling water. It was enough. The sugar gradually subsided into a pellucid liquid, which filled the spoon. Capsicum, who, sick as he was, still watched my proceedings with the deepest interest, and with a patronising air of mild benignity, repeated his testimonial – "Quite right."

Waiting till the sugar was wholly dissolved, I then at length infused sufficient hot water to scald the raw spirits, then added the sugar. Two or three stirs sufficed; not a bead floated on the surface. The mixture was made – tumbler about half an inch from full – a "stiff un." Capsicum raised himself from the table on which he had been leaning, with folded arms, like a cat watching a mouse, and gave a snort of approbation.

"You and that white fellow old acquaintance?" said Capsicum.

"Our acquaintance," replied I, "commenced at Falmouth about a week ago."

"Oh! thought perhaps he was some family connexion," said Capsicum.

"The connexion is quite recent, as I tell you," said I; "but I certainly don't mean to cut it. Hope to dine with him at headquarters, every day I'm disengaged."

"Dine with him at headquarters?" replied Capsicum. "You'll do nothing of the kind, I can tell you that, sir. That is, you'll dine with him at my table; pretty often, too, I trust. Hope I shall frequently have the pleasure of seeing you both. But at his own table, if you're twenty years at headquarters, you won't dine with him once; take my word for that. John Barrymore wouldn't suffer it." Here was a blow!

"Well, but that's a thing I can't understand," said I.

"Well then, I must make you understand it," replied Capsicum. "You are going out on an appointment as clerk in John Barrymore's Department. Isn't it so?" I bowed assent.

"Very well. That white chap does business in commissariat bills. When he gets a bill, he's dying to get the cash. Your Department pays the cash. Don't you see, my dear sir? It wouldn't do. It would be utterly at variance with all the rules of propriety, for any man in your Department to be on terms of intimacy with any man who does business in bills. Besides, it would be contrary to headquarters etiquette; everybody would talk about it. Now," added Capsicum, with a self-approving air, "now I've done my duty by John Barrymore. Noticed you were very thick. Thought I'd tell you, the first opportunity. Oh me! oh me!" (sighing, panting, gasping, pressing his hands on his stomach, and swaying his head from side to side,) "how very ill I do, feel! Such a horrid sensation! a don't-know-howishness – a sort of a come-overishness! The exertion of talking has made me quite bad again. Here, steward! steward! I must go on deck this instant." He turned ghastly green.

"Yet," said I, hoping he would soon be better, "Mr Gingham, it seems, can dine with you, without any breach of propriety."

"Yes, yes, to be sure he can," said Capsicum; "and so can you. Our Department don't finger the cash. Don't you see? That makes all the difference. Hope you'll both dine with me often."

"Shall be very happy," replied I: "much obliged for your kind invitation. But still I can't understand. Mr Gingham has been at headquarters before, and knows headquarters. He also knows, I suppose, that your humble servant is a clerk of the military chest. Yet it was he himself who made the proposal that he and I should campaign together."

"Can't explain that," said Capsicum; "must leave him to explain that as he can. Oh! here he comes."

Gingham, before he turned in, had been on deck, to take a last look at the weather, to commune with the silent night, to scrutinise the horizon, to soliloquise with the clouds, and perhaps for some better and more solemn purposes: for Gingham, with all his oddities, was a man of religious principle, and of devotional feeling, and cared not who knew it. He now approached, and seated himself with us at the cabin table.

"Saw you at Cadiz," said Capsicum. "Think I saw you at Madrid."

"I saw you at Canton," coolly replied Gingham. Capsicum looked a little queer.

"At Canton?" said Capsicum. "Saw me at Canton? Did you, though? Come, come, now you're joking, you know. Did you though, really? How was I dressed?"

"You were dressed like what you were; not exactly as you are dressed now. You had a long, taper pigtail, reaching down to your heels; no hair on your head besides. You had slippers, scarlet and gold, turned up at the toes. You carried a fan; and didn't I once or twice see you followed by a fellow who carried a parasol over your head at the top of a long pole? You had – "

"I'll tell you what," said Capsicum precipitately; "I'm a Christian for all that, and my father was an Englishman. True, I was bred at Canton; but I wasn't born there. Born at Macao. My mother – "

Here, in a voice which ran through all the notes of the gamut, not however in due order, but like the cat's minuet, high and low alternately, Gingham struck up a strange outlandish sort of utterance, whether talking or singing I could not tell; but, if singing, it was the rummest song I ever heard – a jumping, dissonant compound of bass and treble. Capsicum responded in a similar fugue. The two funny rogues were speaking Chinese! The discovery of Capsicum's semi-gentile extraction tickled my fancy not a little.

"So," said Capsicum to Gingham, "you and Johnny intend to make a joint concern of it at headquarters."

"That's how we've settled it," replied Gingham.

"Can't be," said Capsicum. "Thought you knew all headquarters' rules, regulations, and observances."

"Thought I did know something about them," replied Gingham.

"Well, then," replied Capsicum, "don't you know what department young Johnny here belongs to?"

"Your department, the commissariat department, I always understood," replied Gingham; "saw his name put down so in the list of passengers per packet at Falmouth. If Mr Y – will oblige me by referring to a document, which I had the honour of handing him before dinner, he will find himself there designated accordingly."

Sure enough, so it was: "G. Y – , Esq., Commissary-General's Department, in A. C., with Gingham Gingham."

"But didn't you happen to know that Mr Y – , as you call him," said Capsicum, "was John Barrymore's own nephew?"

"Of that circumstance I was not cognisant," replied Gingham, "till I happened to become aware of it by the conversation during dinner. Still I retained my former impression, that Mr Y – belonged to your department, not to the military chest."

"The long and the short of it," said I to Gingham, "is this. Shirty here, I am sorry to say, gives me to understand that, at headquarters, as I am attached to the military chest, and not to the commissariat, I cannot have the pleasure of stretching my legs under your table, when you give a spread. My regret is undissembled and profound."

"Nor," said Gingham, "while we both retain our present positions, can we be more than common acquaintance."

The shock of this dénouement was diverted by Capsicum. Spite of his sea-sickness he had purpled up; his eyes flashed and twinkled beneath his massive and contracted brows; he growled, he grunted, he wheezed, he snorted, he puffed; for a time he could not articulate. Either he performed admirably, or he was regularly riled. At length, recovering his breath, not once looking at me, but leaning over to Gingham on the table, he whispered hurriedly, "What does he mean by that? Shirty? Who's Shirty?" Again he turned very green, and sat back in his chair, panting, and swaying his head, like a man ready to faint.

I was sorry to see him so ill, and begged to apologise. He with the greatest propriety might call me "Johnny Newcome," yet it ill became me to call him "Shirty." The name was casually suggested by his profusion of frill, &c. &c. &c.

"I'll tell you what, Mr Johnny," said Capsicum, "it's well for you I'm so bad as I am: wish I was better, for your sake. Wouldn't I pitch into you at once, and give you a precious good hiding? Oh dear! oh me! I am so very bad!" Then, rallying again: "Ah, I wish you did belong to my department! Wouldn't I detach you on outpost duty? Wouldn't I make you ride till you had no leather left? Wouldn't I send you bullock-hunting over the sierras? Oh, dreadful! dreadful! What a horrid sensation this sea-sickness is! Well, good night. I suppose I shall be called Shirty as long as I live." He tottled off to his berth.

"Yes, you may say that," said Joey, from behind his curtain. Joey was right. Ten years after, I heard an old Peninsular speak of Capsicum by the name of Shirty.

There is certainly something very adhesive in a sobriquet; that is, if it happens to stick when first applied. A lubberly big boy once gave me a thrashing at school; and I gave him the only redress in my power, as we were not allowed to throw stones – the name of "Buttons." He had cheated me at the game; and he had many on his jacket. "Buttons" was his name, to his dying day.

Gingham and I remained at the table. "Mr Capsicum is quite right," said Gingham. "Very proper it should be so. Not the less sorry on that account. At Lisbon, you will, in fact, have joined. From the time we land, then, our communications must be limited to the ordinary civilities of social life: until," he added, with a confidential look, "having digested my grand financial project, with Lisbon as the basis of my operations, I am prepared to promulgate it, as authorised, at the headquarters of the British army. Then," said he, proudly, "I shall take such an entirely different footing, so high above the vulgar imputations which always attach to a dealer in bills, that, without exposing either you or myself to criticism, I may again permit myself the pleasure of cultivating your acquaintance, on our present terms of friendship – I may say, intimacy. At any rate, while we remain on board the packet, that intimacy, I trust, will experience no diminution. Good night, sir."

We shook hands: his manner, I thought, a little stiff.

Left alone in the cabin, leaning on the table, the night-lamp shedding a dim and dubious light, my small modicum of brandy-and-water expended, and the time gone by for brewing another, as the steward had turned in, I sat and ruminated. Gingham, watching his opportunity, had benevolently endeavoured to make me sensible, that, as a clerk on actual service, I should soon be engaged in duties which could not be performed to my own credit, without care and circumspection; and that I might find myself, ere long, in some responsible situation, demanding the utmost caution and energy, to compensate my inexperience. Since the morning, for we had been much together during the day, through his friendly suggestions, I had, in a measure, become conscious of all this: I was beginning to feel the value of such a monitor; and now, it appeared, he was lost to me in that character! Then there were other considerations of a deeper kind. I remembered the dinner at the hotel; I remembered the breakfast; I thought of the travelling store-closet. To have lost such a companion of my first campaign – it was, indeed, a loss! Had I never dined with him, I could have better borne it!

At length I came to this conclusion; that, as all the other passengers had retired to rest, I – had better do the same. I was about to put my decision in execution, when my attention was arrested by a lamentable cry, which issued from the berth of poor Mr Commissary Capsicum. "I can't – I can't – I'm stuck! – weak as a rat! Oh, I am so very bad! Here, steward! steward! – ah! oh!" Having heard his monody to the end, and waited in vain for a second stave, I flew to his assistance.

Poor Mr Commissary Capsicum had contrived to divest himself of his diurnal habiliments; and was now embellished with a red bonnet de nuit; and an elegant night-shirt, which fitted – as if it had been made for him. I found him – in what an attitude! One leg he had contrived to hoist into his berth. Quoad that leg, he was kneeling on the mattress. The other leg was stretched towards the floor, which he barely touched with his extended and agonised toe. In this painful position, he was clawing with both hands at the board intended to keep him in bed, equally unable to advance and to recede. Something – either the wooden tester – or the proximity of his shake-down to the deck above – or what else, I cannot pretend to say – prevented his further movements. He wanted strength; there he was, literally, as he expressed it, stuck. I expressed the deepest sympathy.

Joey whipped on his drawers and dressing-gown, and was with us in a twinkling. Joey, seeing all other expedients vain, brought his shoulder to bear, and commenced a series of well-directed hoists, each hoist accompanied with a musical "Yeo-heave-ho." I laughed; Joey laughed; poor Capsicum himself caught the infection: his whining and whimpering gradually glided into a deep pectoral chuckle. The object was at length effected. Capsicum was stowed for the night; but not without vigorous and long-continued efforts, both on Joey's part and mine. "Can't imagine what caused the obstruction," said I; "it's prodigious; it's incredible." "Incredible, but true," replied Joey; "suppose we call it 'A tail founded on facts.'" "Good night. Good night, Mr Capsicum." "Good night, Mr Capsicum; good night." "Good night; ah! oh! what shall I do? Suppose I should be taken bad again before morning! Thank you both. Goodnight. Two impudent, unfeeling young hounds. Good night."

So terminated our first day afloat.

CHAPTER V

It has been intelligently remarked, that, in writing travels by land or by sea, the traveller has only to jot down everything just as it occurs, and he will be sure to produce a book worth reading. This rule may be excellent in theory; but, gentle reader, it will not do. Only look here. I have not jotted down one tithe of the incidents of the first ten hours since we left harbour; and see what a long yarn it makes. A man who, in travelling, really registered everything, would yarn away at the rate of a quarto a week.

There is, however, an observation which is much more to the purpose; namely, that one day at sea is very like another. This we certainly found out, in our voyage from Falmouth to Lisbon. For, with the exception of changes in wind and weather, little occurred to vary our daily existence; at least till we got off Oporto, and took in fresh passengers. During the first night after we left Falmouth, the wind got round to the S.W. We had three days of it, regular Channel weather: thick, cloudy, squally – much rain – the ship pitching, labouring, creaking, straining, groaning – going every way but the way we wanted to go – all the passengers, except Joey, more or less indisposed – and nobody pleased but the skipper, who whistled a perpetual "Yankee doodle" rondo, and seemed to exult in our miseries. "I calculate," said Joey, "if this lasts much longer, we shall come to anchor in the Downs." For want of anything to relate, and for the benefit of the reader, should he cross "the Bay," I shall here beg leave to say a few words respecting that horrid malady to which landsmen are subject on board ship, and respecting my own mode of dealing with it. Experto crede.